Vintagepearl

I recently acquired an old roman. I am having trouble identifying it and my camera doesn't create a good close up shot. Details: It has a man on one side looking to the right. Face looks a little slender. On the reverse it has what I think is Latin letters/words. They are in a wreath . There are around 5 lines of Latin on it. Help anyone!!!!

Thanks,

Riley

Vintagepearl

My only guess would be this "AE4. VOT / XV / MVLT / XX in wreath (large module)"

http://esty.ancients.info/ricix/type25.html

The latin matches this one exactly.

Any guesses on value?

Ardatirion

Please provide a picture or at least a complete transcription of the obverse legend, reverse legend, and mintmark.

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Gao

That describes a very large number of coins. In the 4th century, the vast majority of emperors were depicted with virtually identical portraits, and just about all of them had some votis reverses like that. We're going to need the legend on the front (or at least the bits of it that you can read) if you want to identify the emperor, and we're going to need the diameter in millimeters and the mintmark (the text on the bottom of the reverse) if you want a specific attribution. Also, keep in mind that you can generally scan coins well enough to identify if you or someone you know has a scanner. Just make sure to put it at the highest dpi you can. You'll also need to give us condition if you want us to give you a meaningful value.

I should also give you a heads up that 4th century Roman bronzes are generally very common and not worth very much at all. There's a decent chance that this coin is only worth a couple of bucks.

Vintagepearl

I have a scanner and have the DPI at 600 and the image of the coin is still blurry. Any tips?

Gao

Honestly, my scanner's always worked well enough that I never had to mess with it, so I don't have much to offer. You could try playing with the settings a bit to see if it gets better.

In any case, how blurry is it? Is it good enough that we can make out the legends? If so, I'd say post what you have for now. If it isn't, give us what you can read of the legends on both sides of the coin (there's more surviving than just the VOT/MVLT part, right?) and its diameter in millimeters, and we can see what we can do from there.

Vintagepearl

I think I'll be able to make out some of the rest of the legend. I could probably get it cleaner but I don't know how to clean the coin well. How should I clean it up a bit more so I can read the rest of the writing along the sides and bottom?

Cucumbor

Please, provide a picture
And do not clean the coin unless you know what you're doing

Q

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Gao

I'd be pretty wary about cleaning it, as you can easily damage a coin if you are too harsh, particularly if it was British found (I learned the hard way that when a seller warns you to be gentle with a British uncleaned, he means it. I never knew you could rub off most of the obverse of a coin with a toothbrush). I doubt it's a British uncleaned, since sellers of those are usually pretty specific about it, but if you chose to clean it, you still should be careful not to scratch the thing up by usuing something too hard to scrape it, nor do you want to strip it down to the bare metal with a chemical that's too harsh. You can find a decent guide to cleaning uncleaned ancients here, and if you really want to use a faster working chemical, you can always pick up one of the Gringott's Mixes (you can find them easily enough online), which are designed to use on ancient coins. No matter what you use, if you are cleaning it properly, it's going to be a long process. There's the additional problem that you may already have a coin that is cleaned as much as it should be, so I would recommend giving us even a blurry picture of the thing to see if we can tell if any cleaning is a good idea.

I also recommend giving us the bits of the legend that you can read. Even if you can only read a few of the letters, we may be able to narrow down what it could be.

Finally, I'm curious as to where you got it and how much you payed. Did you just grab one off of eBay or a local dealer or something? Did they give you any information about it aside from it being Roman?

Vintagepearl

What do you think?

Gao

It looks like you just took that one image off of that website. Are you saying that you have an identical coin or bought that one off of him or something? You mentioned earlier that the reverse seemed to match the one from that site, but this is far from telling us whether the coin is the same. Is the text on both sides identical to yours?

Vintagepearl

I got in as close as I could I could with a magnifying glass and all of the words on the right side of the face match. I can't see the words on the left well enough. Hopefully that won't make a difference.

Gao

Assuming that you indeed see "SIVSPFAVG" there, it is indeed a coin of Theodosius I, whose VOT/XV/MVLT/XX reverses date to 379-383 AD according to this site (which is the best site for identifying late Roman bronzes that I'm aware of). In order to know the exact type of this coin, we're going to need to know the mintmark, which is what's written beneath the wreath on the back. Give us what you can, even if it's only a letter or two. In addition, you will need to give us an idea of the condition before we can give you a meaningful value.

I tried to find some Theodosian VOT/XV/MVLT/XX coins on some of the usual coin shopping sites to give you a very rough ballpark for pricing, but I'm having trouble finding that exact reverse. This could mean that it's a rarer one, or it could just be that no one has any in stock at the moment. I don't have a reference book for coins of this era, and I dont' really collect Romans this late much, so you will have to hope someone else here can give you more information than that (and they'll probably need a mintmark before they can tell you much). You may be able to get a very, very rough idea of how much it's worth by searching for "Theodosius Vot" or "Theodosius Votis" on VCoins, but you would probably need someone who knows more about this particular area to tell you whether this would really be equivalent.

Ardatirion

You sure you don't want to post your scan, however bad it may be?

Value of these coins is almost entirely dependent on condition. If its very high grade, it could be worth $60-75. The one in the image you posted above is probably worth around $25.

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Vintagepearl

Thanks for your opinions guys!! Yes my scan would of shown nothing. I can't get high enough DPI for anything to be visible. Anyways I'll try to get a mint mark and report back. The condition is anywhere from poor to fair.